Brady admitted in his presser that they had to make a lot of adjustments losing Woodhead and Gronk in the first series. No problem, they took Vereen off the bench and let him do his best impression of Tomlinson to the tune of 3 TDs. Scored 41 offensive points. As long as 12 is under center, they will mix and match their way down the field to points.

This is correct. However, as long as the Pats are putting that ****ty defense out there, the Ravens have a chance.

Once again, when a team is playing from 20 points behind, bad things tend to happen. In a tight game, you see how bad they suck. The Patriots' defense is not good. Stop with this ****.

Really, if the game is close and the other team has the ball with two minutes to go, do you really want the Patriots' defense on the field? They ****ing suck. The offense masks everything.

See, here's how it works. The offense has been scoring a lot of points, while the defense was preventing them. Hence, the constant big leads.

As far as holding a small lead late, most teams struggle with that on a regular basis, because it's hard to defend when a team is in four-down desperation mode. Fortunately, NE is good enough on both sides of the ball to avoid those situations most of the time.

Gronk being out hurts a lot - adjustment talk aside. He's starting to look not very durable unfortunately - which I never would have expected for a guy as big and athletic as he is.

Anyway, Brady is the key to the Pats as anyone knows. I think the Ravens are more capable of pressuring Brady than the Texans D. Watt's a great player but it takes more than edge pressure to knock Brady off his game.

Exactly. It gets silly when fans start talking about games at a professional level being determined by "motivation," as if professional athletes need to be incentivized, cajoled, or tricked into caring whether or not they win or lose. I suspect a fair amount of it derives from the age old white perception of "lazy blacks."